


A Crack in Time

by trankvilizator



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 09:01:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18443324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trankvilizator/pseuds/trankvilizator
Summary: Minhyung visits his hometown at the request of his current boyfriend, Jaehyun, who's looking for the inspiration for a fantasy novel. It so happens that he meets his first lover, Taeyong.





	A Crack in Time

 

Minhyung didn't intend to ever come back to his hometown.

As their car passes by the welcome sign at the start of the forest, with the yellow paint peeling off of it the same way it was on the day Minhyung left, the memories gradually surge back. The misty air, the smell of pine trees. All the details place themselves into their rightful spots in Minhyung's mind like pieces of a puzzle moved around the table by Jaehyun's swift, soft hands. Jaehyun's the reason he's coming back.

Just a month ago, seated before the notebook like he usually is and wearing his thick-rimmed glasses with the desk lamp's slanted light glinting off of them, Jaehyun said, "I need ideas for my new novel." At this exact moment, Minhyung knew what the man was asking for. "I need something mysterious and inexplicable. Three hundred pages for the whole thing. My editor's expecting the first manuscript to be ready by the end of March."

Minhyung was standing in the doorway of their shared flat, his arms crossed in the defensive stance of the twenty-three year old man he was, yet somehow making him look more like a stubborn teenager that he used to be. He and Jaehyun, they've been together for more than two years now and the thing he loved most about Jaehyun was that the man never asked too many questions.

"Let's visit your hometown," Jaehyun proposed then. When Jaehyun really cared about something, his way of speaking easily switched into a stream of consciousness made up of pretty words. That's how Minhyung knew the thing was serious. "I don't mean to make you a tourist guide. You don't have to say anything about what happened. I just need to be there, breathe the air and feel what I can only read about in the newspapers."

Once upon the time, Minhyung was in a newspaper too. The photo showed his fourteen-year-old face startled by the news reporter's camera flash and underneath it was printed the newest headline, "Family of three disappeared. Son left alone." Long story short, he was the son left alone. It was his family who disappeared, mother, father and older sister. It happened almost ten years ago.

Jaehyun stood up from before his desk. He came up to Minhyung.

"Please say yes, babe."

At first resisting the hug, Minhyung went, "Is there really no other place we could go to to get you inspired?"

That's the reason they're in the car right now, driving the exact same road Minhyung can remember his fourteen-year-old self in a yellow raincoat riding a bicycle through the rain. It always rained there. Rain's in every memory Minhyung has of his hometown. They call it the Town Where People Disappear. That's all there is to it. People just disappear and they are never found, neither in the town nor anywhere else. That's what happened to Minhyung's family too.

 

 

 

 

The first thing that differs this place from any other town in the vicinity is the overbearing presence of missing person posters--hanging on fences, power poles, in the windows of shops and bars. Wherever you find yourself and whenever you look around, they're always in your sight. As nobody is ever found and the search is forever ongoing, the old posters of the people Minhyung remembers from his primary school years keep hanging covered by the new ones, all of them slowly yellowing and getting more damp with each autumn.

Jaehyun's looking at them without asking questions because he knows Minhyung isn't going to answer them. The part of Minhyung's life which is located here, in this small town squeezed in the crack between forests and mountains, with the power plant hovering on the horizon, isn't achievable for Jaehyun. And it's not his aim to begin with.

They're sitting in the hotel room of the only hotel in town, with the view on the power plant in the distance, and Minhyung's mood cheers up a little, for the first time since they arrived. While organising his clothes on the shelf of the wardrobe, he goes, "When I was a first grader, kids used to say it's a forest monster."

Jaehyun looks at the dimples digging into the man's cheeks giving him the childish look, like if he's back in this exact moment in time and Jaehyun's talking to the kid version of his boyfriend. "A monster?"

"They said it lived in a mountain cave and ate everyone who came into the forest after dark." He seemed amused remembering himself believe in the legend. "Everyone at school would plan an expedition to the forest, collect equipment and look for maps. Even though it went without saying that kids were not allowed to go anywhere on their own. The whole town was freaked out." Minhyung's face being an open book, Jaehyun can see the exact moment a thought pops to his mind, sending a wince over his mouth. "Whenever I wanted to go places, mum forced my sister to go with me. So embarrassing." A pause. "And then they both disappeared and I didn't."

What follows is an awkward silence during which he puts the last t-shirt on the shelf and freezes to the spot. The emotions wash over his face and two of them must be grief and regret, leading Jaehyun to come up to Minhyung and hug him from behind. He places his chin on the man's shoulder and intertwines his fingers on his stomach.

"We weren't supposed to talk about it, remember?"

"It's fine. It's in the past." But Jaehyun catches the sight of Minhyung's jaw tensing as he swallows, the youthful look now gone from his eyes, bringing back the twenty-three-year-old. The man who's been raised by a grandfather and left the town as soon as he graduated. "Just promise me you won't go weird places on your own."

"Are you worried that I'll end up eaten by the local forest monster?"

"Rather a serial killer. Or a group of serial killers." Minhyung looks at Jaehyun over his shoulder. "You know how in places as small as this one everyone knows each other. So if everyone decides to cover the murderer, the police can't do shit. There's lots of whispers but you can't tell what they say."

Jaehyun makes a murmur. With his chin still on Minhyung's shoulder, he asks, "What if there is a crack in time somewhere in the mountains and people don't disappear but simply step into another dimension?"

Minhyung considers. "You're still speaking about my hometown or about your novel?"

Jaehyun giggles. "Both?" And then, "I promise I'll be good. No wandering away on my own, no walking into the forest at night. Got it." He lifts his chin and aims with his lips to Minhyung's. The kiss is brief but reassuring.

"One more thing."

"I'm all ears."

"Try not to tell people that you've come with me. They're suspicious here. I don't want to talk to everyone who's ever known me about why I left and why I'm back."

They're now both looking out of the window and at the power plant sending grey clouds up the rainy sky. "So what? Are you planning to hide yourself in the hotel room for the whole week?"

"Good thinking."

 

 

 

 

The plan doesn't work out.

Turns out Minhyung isn't the kind of person able to contain himself inside the four walls of a hotel room for a period of time longer than twelve hours. With Jaehyun already out, in search of inspiring imagery for his novel, Minhyung decides to drop by the pub which he knows is on the same street as the hotel. The pub he remembers his younger self go to to bring dad back home. He grabs his phone, puts on the jacket and spontaneously storms out of the room, as if it's his feet that carry him outside and he has no control over their movement. Or like it's a film and an invisible hand drags him outside, making him follow some sort of predestined path, carrying him into the next scene.

Sometimes he realises he's read too many of Jaehyun's stories.

Now that he's twenty three and his father has been disappeared for over ten years, the pub no longer seems big and inaccessible as it used to. There are a few old men inside, each sitting alone, scattered around the place which smells of damp, wood and beer. He pulls up the collar of his jacket, in the last nonchalant attempt of partially hiding his face and this way his identity, before coming up to the barman. The place sounds of echoing whispers devoid of meaning, the clinking of thick glass and the local news playing on TV. Faces show up on the screen, missing people, and Minhyung can swear he recognises a few of them, even if unable to pinpoint the exact names. Perhaps a shop assistant. Or a fellow student. The other clients of the pub are also looking up at the screen, all scruffy men in raincoats.

And then someone else comes in.

It's the rhythmical sound of the steps that draws Minhyung's attention. Seconds before he even drags his eyes up the silhouette, the sight of legs alone makes his heart drop in his chest.

Seemingly exactly the same Minhyung remembers him, but completely different. Taller and more muscled, wearing a long winter jacket coloured khaki with a fur hood, underneath it a chequered t-shirt in the same composition of bland colours that make you unnoticeable when put against the backdrop of the forest. Despite the passing years, Minhyung thinks to himself, nothing changed in terms of the local fashion.

Trying not to make it too obvious, he watches as Taeyong comes up to the bar, putting both of his elbows on its surface. He talks with the barman. Lifts one hand to show his law enforcement badge. Then, Minhyung hears the old barman call out his name. "Taeyong."

The name, hearing it outside of his own head for the first time in a long time, triggers the memories and makes Minhyung stir in his chair. He remembers the time when all the elderly people in town knew Taeyong as the annoying brat throwing eggs at people's houses and smoking before the school entrance. Everyone used to say Taeyong would be next. Sneaking out of home, wandering around the town at night. He seemed like just the kind of kid that deserved being punished by the unnamed force influencing the town.

"Lee Minhyung," he hears then, and it seems like in the exact moment Minhyung blinked his eyes, Taeyong materialised himself right in front of his table. He puts his two hands on top of it and leans towards Minhyung, his slim body arching. "Don't say you thought I wouldn't recognise you."

There is a pause. They both look at one another, a bit awkwardly studying each other's faces as if it's a game of spotting the differences between two pictures. The past and the present. A hands-off version of feeling another person's face with fingers pressed against their skin.

"You did not change at all," Taeyong states at last, bluntly. "Years pass and I would still hesitate selling you alcohol."

Minhyung frowns at the words. "So now you're a cop too. Like father, like son." Taeyong proudly slips the badge out of the front pocket of his jacket as a proof. Minhyung briefly glances at it, then back up at Taeyong. "What's going on this time?"

The smile leaves Taeyong's face. Its place takes the serious expression Minhyung assumes to be a new addition to the man's facial repertoire. The serious look of a law enforcement member. Something that must have come with time and practice. "A ten year old disappeared two days ago. Parents are freaking out."

"What a place to live where people keep disappearing and everyone freaks out if you don't pick up the phone for ten minutes."

Taeyong stays silent for a moment. The seriousness lingers in the features of his face, dragging the corners of his lips down and making him look even more similar to his father. Now, Minhyung remembers Taeyong's father better than his own. "I don't want the disappearings to be normalised. No matter who," Taeyong stops, then resumes, "or what causes them."

"Four years since I moved out. Let me guess. Still no evidence, no witnesses and no convictions." Just as he pronounces the words, the impression passes through his mind like it's a continuation to some old conversation they must have had back in time, like there were no years of separation between then and now, and everything goes smoothly onward.

"Do you know why I'm doing this?" Taeyong asks before taking a seat opposite to Minhyung and wrapping his arm around the back of his chair. Minhyung guesses that what he means is becoming a cop and interrogating people. "Because even if most people here disappear without a clue, not every case is the same." Minhyung feels tempted to throw a "no shit", but stops himself. "A town like this may seem a good place for a real kidnapping."

"Yeah. If I ever plan to kidnap someone, I'll sure remember to bring them here first."

Taeyong furrows his eyebrows but then lets it slip. "I won't let anyone lower their guard. That's what I mean."

There comes another pause and judging by the changing expression on Taeyong's face, Minhyung guesses he feels awkward having said all that to someone he sees for the first time in four years.

Tapping his fingers against the table, Taeyong changes his tone. "So why you're here?"

Back to the proper beginning. The question manages to catch Minhyung off-guard and to gain some time for consideration, he takes a sip from his glass, watching Taeyong watch his lips. The tension is back there, like it's never left and like Minhyung has never left. "Brought my significant other to see the town of my childhood," he reveals at last.

He witnesses how the expectation evaporates and Taeyong's expression darkens in just a split of a second. On one hand, it makes Minhyung satisfied, as if he's just won a small fight between them on who can make the other person more uncomfortable. But on the other, seeing Taeyong disappointed makes him disappointed as well, as if he unconsciously absorbs the other man's emotions just by looking.

"So how do they like it here?"

"He says it's beautiful." Then, "I'm sure you have to go back to your investigation. Nice seeing you again."

 

 

 

 

Meeting Taeyong makes Minhyung change his plans yet again. As if he feels forced to as a boyfriend, he decides to accompany Jaehyun on one of his strolls round the town. Jaehyun in his long brown coat walking the streets of a place Minhyung knows so well, he looks like a human form cut out of a glossy magazine and glued onto a black-and-white photograph, an unreal view of a time traveler into another dimension like one of many characters in Jaehyun's stories.

"I've spent my whole life in a big city," he hears Jaehyun say but can't see his lips move as the man looks around with his neck craned to one side. "Feels refreshing to walk down the street where there's no cars and no people. Good place for thinking."

"And for sneaking out of school for a cigarette," Minhyung jokes then, his hands in the short winter jacket he's wearing. "That I can tell you from experience."

Jaehyun chuckles in just the way Minhyung predicted him to. He looks at Minhyung and his eyes crinkle at the edges. "I didn't know that side of you, you naughty boy." When he receives the deserved chuckle back from Minhyung, he slightly changes his tone, "You speak so rarely about your childhood. It makes this trip special to me."

Minhyung shrugs his shoulders. "So what do you want to know?" Before Jaehyun can reply, "I hung out with the wrong kids and caused trouble. First for my parents, and then for my grandpa." Maybe it's more of a confession he wishes someone to accept, rather than an interesting life fact.

Jaehyun nods his head. Their shoes dig through the thick layer of autumnal leaves the colour of a late sunset. The rustles follow each step they take forwards.

"The friends of my sister would fix cigarettes and alcohol and whenever we would get caught, I was always declared innocent because I was younger."

"They must have hated you."

Minhyung makes a charming smile. And then, as his eyes leave Jaehyun's face and he drags them back to the street, he notices something.

It must have happened on the subconscious level, without him realising it, that he started leading Jaehyun down the street straight to where he knows his home used to be. The same street that he keeps the distorted, blurry image of. Like it's a recording stored at the back of his mind, he can see the young Minhyung on a red bicycle, in a yellow raincoat, blithely pedalling back home under the roof made of weeping willows, the road dipping ahead of him and making the bike go faster. As the speed rises, the rain hits him harder in the face but he keeps smiling.

"--you listening?" The words bring Minhyung back to the present moment. "I thought it's only in my books that characters can zone out like this midway the conversation."

"Shit. I'm sorry. I've just had a flashback."

Jaehyun makes a step to the right to be walking closer by Minhyung's side as if he's about to slip his hand into the pocket of Minhyung's jacket. Looking Minhyung in the eyes, sheer curiosity showing on his face, he goes, "Can I ask what sort of a flashback?"

"Nothing special."

"The less you tell me, the more interested I get. You know how it works. The unknown is the most interesting." Jaehyun considers his own words. "It's like with writing. It's not about what you say, it's about what you don't say."

Cutting the impending talk about literature, Minhyung goes, "I was thinking about how I used to drive my bike down this street."

"This street in particular?"

"I used to live there." He pulls one hand out of the pocket of his jacket and into the cold October air, and points at the house on the other side of the street which they're slowly approaching. It's a brick building, visibly abandoned and with boarded-up windows. The big yellow letters sprayed on the façade say, "The end is near," all caps.

"Sounds corny," Jaehyun comments as they stop walking and stare at the house. "I could come up with something else in just a second."

"Something like what?"

"The madness has infiltrated the system."

Minhyung sniggers. "Does this really sound like a slogan for vandals to spray on someone's property?"

"What about: What haunts us is the absence of the truth."

"Try again."

Jaehyun pretends to be annoyed. "The end is near. Fine. I can go with this one too." They fall silent for what may be five or even ten minutes, up until the moment Jaehyun asks another question, "What if all the bodies of the missing people are laying somewhere piled up and simply haven't been found yet?" White clouds of hot air leave his mouth.

"There's groups of volunteers combing the forest each time someone disappears. They checked the mountains. The caves..." Just as he says the words, he loses all confidence in them and frowns. "There's no particular type of people that disappear, that's the problem. It seems completely random. Anyone can go missing. No motive connecting all the disappearances."

What Jaehyun said about the madness infiltrating and the absence of truth haunting, that's how Minhyung feels too. On the pavement covered with dead leaves, with Jaehyun standing by his side, Minhyung attempts to pinpoint his emotions but they all slip out of his reach. Not a person in town knew the reason, but each person needed to have one.

"I have an uncanny impression of being observed," Jaehyun comments.

 

 

 

 

How Jaehyun and Minhyung first met was at a ghost tour in a haunted hotel. To pay the tuition for the second year of his university education in a big city with high rents, Minhyung snatched up the job of a night auditor. The hotel was a place known for quite a number of murders and suicides and its current clientèle was mostly made up of supernatural investigators and ghost haunters, with their kinect cameras and spirit boxes wandering down the corridors.

Jaehyun was the guy in a white shirt and a brown coat who separated himself from the tourist group and was staring at the ceiling. When asked if he needed any help, he looked at Minhyung with that soft, handsome smile that totally had Minhyung fall for him at the first sight.

"If you look too quick, you can miss a lot of details," Jaehyun said then, as if more to himself than to Minhyung, the first words he had spoken to Minhyung, "but if you do a little bit of gymnastics with your eyes, the way the camera does it," he demonstrated the point by craning his neck and dragging his eyes up to the ceiling, "you may see things anew."

The hotel was a ten-floor, two-hundred-room, art-deco building, squeezed in the middle of a bustling street of neons and exhaust fumes. Whenever you walked down the corridor you heard the guests discuss the orbs they caught on camera or the candles they lit to draw the ghosts in. Certainly not Minhyung's dream workplace.

"What sort of things?" he asked the guy, both of them standing in the middle of the empty corridor with a carpeted floor and heavily panelled walls. One of the many downsides of working in a haunted hotel was that you met weird guys on a daily basis and had to work your way around them.

Jaehyun said, "Like the trap door in the ceiling. You can see it under the wallpaper," and indicated one spot on the ceiling with the move of his chin. "Is there a room above us or a corridor?

Minhyung frowned, thinking. His nose crinkled. "Pretty sure it's a corridor."

"Interesting."

"Is it really?"

As Minhyung's question was still reverberating off the walls, the man made a step forward and pulled a hand out of the pocket of his coat. Willy-nilly, Minhyung gave him a hand-shake. "Jung Jaehyun. Rented a room for the next two months. I'm planning to write a novel." So that was who the caramel-latte haired individual in a brown, knee-long coat was. Before Minhyung had the time to comment on the newly received piece of information, he asked, "What about you?"

"Lee Minhyung. Just a student with a part-time job."

Jaehyun smiled. "Must suck to be killed in a hotel and then haunt the room you rented, instead of your own house. I would love to haunt my apartment."

"In a hotel you could get a much bigger audience."

"That's a good point." Jaehyun put the hand back to the pocket of his coat. His eyes run down to the floor and to the end of the long corridor. "Any secret treasure the murderer left? Silent calls you get at the reception desk? Bet there's many weird guys hanging around there."

Minhyung sniggered. "No, not many. Just you."

Jaehyun smiled yet again. A charming little smile with hair falling into his eyes. "What about the ghosts?"

"Let me tell you a real secret," Minhyung started then. "We have audio tapes with fake ghost noises that we play for the tourists. Planned power outages three times a week. Sometimes I'm asked to run down the stairs in a costume and make a lot of noise to freak the guests out." Watching the expression on Jaehyun's handsome face, he went, "So to sum up, no. No ghosts that I know of."

Jaehyun responded that yes, he would certainly enjoy his stay in this hotel. "Next time you run down the stairs in the middle of the night," he said, "make sure to run nearby my room."

The second time they met was at the entrance to the hotel, two o'clock at night, a little conversation during which Minhyung smoked and Jaheyun commented on how the red neon of the hotel sign made him think of a good thriller film. Then he started plotting the whole story and Minhyung nodded his head along each plot point added. With the smoke of Minhyung's cigarette and the fog visible in the cones of street lamp light falling to the street, Jaehyun looked like a film protagonist too. The handsome male lead.

Jaehyun asked, "Saw this guy?" and motioned with his chin, like he often did, towards a black car that's just been started, the headlights cutting through the dark. "He looked at us so nervously I could see his eyes from afar. Like he was hiding something. Maybe dragging a dead body into the boot."

"I don't think everyone hides secrets like you wish to think."

Jaehyun looked at Minhyung through the cigarette smoke. "What about you then?" he asked. "Hiding any secrets? Dark past?"

Mark sniggered in response, somehow amused and relaxed. In the world of Jaehyun's imagination, he thought then, him and his disappearing family must have sounded pretty mundane.

When Minhyung didn't respond, Jaehyun went, "Okay. Fine." Minhyung could hear the chuckle in his voice. "Just a handsome young student in a murder hotel."

 

 

 

 

Back to now, to the only hotel lobby in the entire town where Jaehyun's descending the stairs, his morning hair ruffled and a notebook to type the story in under his arm. The story Jaehyun writes is about a man who's old enough to get married but whose mind is stuck in the past, in a single traumatic experience that changed all the events that followed it. In real life, you can't have a sudden plot twist that leads to a happy ending. There's no katharsis to make you feel better and no dénouement at the end of it all. Nothing starts in medias res and changes deus ex machina. Those things happen only in books, because in real life, the beginning chases you till the very end, breathless.

Jaehyun greets the hotel owner slumped over the reception desk as she usually is, and walks into the lounge, watching the long shadow he's casting.

The best thing about a historical hotel in a dying town is that there are no other tourists in sight. The sea of chesterfield sofas, ottomans upholstered in leather and wooden tables with lion legs, it's for Jaehyun's use only. If he decides to walk down the corridors and up the staircases, at any time of the day and night, the only human beings he might bump into are the personnel members.

And a police officer in plain clothes, turns out.

Jaehyun lifts his eyes from the screen and observes as the man walks in, long legs and a young face that suggests they might be of a similar age. The sun is high up the sky and it pours into the lounge through the stained glass windows, rendering the man violet, red and yellow and reflecting the patterns on the skin of his face and on the black jacket on his back. Jaehyun takes his fingers off the keyboard.

Already from afar, the man's holding his identification card to show it to Jaehyun, like it's a scene out of a film and Jaehyun's a suspect to be arrested. The idea makes him straighten his back, sends a shiver of excitement.

"Lee Taeyong," that's how it starts, a dialogue unfolding between the two characters, "Four days ago a child disappeared a street away from here. We're looking for witnesses."

Instead of responding immediately, Jaehyun takes a moment to study the man's appearance, his red hair and the unprofessional look displayed on his good-looking face.

"I'm afraid we weren't there yet four days ago."

"We?"

Jaehyun takes another moment. "Me and the accompanying me person. You can ask the hotel owner to verify it."

"What's the reason behind your stay?" Then, he clarifies, "Tourists don't visit us that often."

"I'm aware." Jaehyun makes a vague move with his hand that's showing the interior of the hotel. Empty and silent. "I'm writing a novel."

Taeyong blinks his eyes during the noticeable silence following Jaehyun's response. "A novel about?"

Jaehyun provides the smooth reply he's already had ready in his head, "A small town where the locals practise human sacrifice ceremonies to satisfy the monster living among them." A pause. "Or about a small town where the nuclear plant created an interdimensional crack through which the locals accidentally travel in time and can't come back." When the officer doesn't respond, he goes, "It's a fantasy novel."

Watched by Jaehyun, he puts his identification card back into his jacket and then both his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "I see." There's a stream of thoughts visibly going through the man's face, pulling down the corners of his lips and each of his eyebrows. Something outside of the conversation.

"I'm just a guy going to weird places." The conversation slows down, as if this is the exact crack in time approaching, the moving non-place place that makes things freeze. "Must be hard working on an unsolvable case."

 

 

 

 

The memories of him and Minhyung from the past stay fragmented but fresh in Taeyong's head. One image in particular emerges and floats to the top like a drop of oil in water. Close up to it like it's a substance seen through a microscope. Finger prints analysed. Violet liquid mixing and braiding down into the test tube.

Minhyung always smelt of fizzy sherbet powder.

His long thin legs in shorts, whole body laying flat on a dingy, floral patterned sofa thrown out in the middle of the forest, he had his arms under his head and was looking up at the tree crowns without seeming to look at anything specific. Taeyong, sitting crossed-legged in a tattered leather armchair opposite the sofa, watched him watch nothing. Then, Minhyung took the lolly out of his mouth and said, "Did you know that kid?"

Taeyong said who.

"The one that's been missing. The kid from the posters."

"I don't think so, no."

Minhyung put the lollipop back into his mouth.

In this memory, Minhyung was seventeen and Taeyong nineteen, the age Minyung's older sister would be if she was around. Taeyong used to go to one class with her and how he got to know Minhyung was the generally accepted rule that kids were not allowed to go places on their own. In consequence, Minhyung's sister would always bring Minhyung with her because she had no other choice, no matter how embarrassing a younger brother may be. Fast forward four years, now it was Minhyung and Taeyong, just the two of them hanging around.

Dropping the cigarette into the wet leaves and stamping it with his plimsoll shoe, Taeyong went, "You sure your grandfather isn't looking for you right now?"

Minhyung took the lolly out. "Probably not. Probably he's just sitting in the kitchen and drinking. He usually does that." And the voice in which he said the words was devoid of care, as if it wasn't really his business and he had nothing to do with it, with an air of a teenager going through one of his phases.

Maybe that was the time Taeyong thought to himself that he wanted be the person to make Minhyung feel safe.

"What are you thinking about?"

"You're asking many questions today," Minhyung pointed out, with both annoyance and amusement in his tone. "I'm thinking that I'm going to move out of here as soon as I graduate. Get my diploma and get the hell out of here." He looked up at Taeyong, expectancy appearing in his eyes. "What about you?"

"Hard to say."

"Do you want to disappear then?"

 

 

 

 

Thinking of that, Taeyong looks at his reflection in the bar's window. He fixes a strand of his red hair, pushes it aside from his forehead, only then moves on, opens the double door with a single strong push. One of the things about being a police officer in a small town like here is that wherever you go, you stay a police officer. You don't go places as yourself, privately, so you don't ever have a reason to look good.

But now Minhyung's back and Taeyong has a feeling like he's stepping into a new crime scene, an investigation that requires his full attention because it may have a resolution, at last.

He spots the younger man almost immediately, two steps into the bar. Collecting the energy from his surroundings, out of the passionate voices of old men commenting the local match being played on tv, he speeds up his gait and adds a self-confident quality to it. He wants Minhyung to notice him as well, from afar. Like it's used to be in the past where he was awaited by Minhyung and greeted with a smile, when he heard his own name yelled out of Minhyung's mouth from the end of the school yard. The time when he used to be Minhyung's closest friend and beyond that, the only company for long walks in the forest.

"Mind if I join?" he goes. Takes the chair, turns it around and sits astride, placing his both elbows on the chair's back and crossing his arms. He leans forwards. "Minhyung?"

The younger man reacts with a delay, evidently caught midway through thinking. He half stands up from his seat, the stubborn teenager reaction, like when he was asked by the teachers to stop smoking while sitting on the school's windowsill. "I was about to leave."

"Finish drinking."

Minhyung sits back down. Someone has scored a goal and the bunch of old men in the bar make a noise of enthusiasm. It's just a few seconds or a whole minute as Taeyong stares into Minhyung's face, looking for the wrinkles and at the darker circles around his eyes, jotting down the way his features grew sharper, the trace of facial hair shaved in the morning. He wonders how to approach the new him, how to make it clear he acknowledges they are different after those three years but at the same time suggests that maybe they aren't.

"I'm off-duty today. We don't need to hurry."

"I've finished drinking."

Taeyong smiles with one corner of his lips lifted. "Next round is on me?"

"Seriously. Cut it off."

As he rolls the response around his tongue, Minhyung watches him in silence. "You came here with your boyfriend, but instead of spending time with him, you're sitting in the bar where we've already met and where you knew I would come again. Who are you lying to?"

A flicker of an eyelid, Minhyung stands up and heads towards the exit. It's irritation but also a sense of familiarity, like they are re-enacting a scene they both know by heart. Taeyong follows after him, sliding his hands into the pockets of his jacket.

"Don't be like this."

The door is opened, closed. They walk into the street where the lights are dim and Minhyung's black leather coat blends with the background. The man's grown taller, fuller in his chest. Noticing all that, Taeyong speeds up and walks backwards, blocking Minhyung's way.

Minhyung goes, "You're part of the past I'm trying to erase."

"Don't tell me you thought you could come in and nobody would notice."

Minhyung furrows his eyebrows. "Did you tell someone else that I'm here?"

"I kept that for myself."

"But you came to interrogate my boyfriend."

Taeyong chuckles, slightly embarrassed. As he lowers his head, the red strands fall back to his forehead. "Yeah, I did. I had to. I was curious to see him."

They stop by the street lamp and with the light falling onto Minhyung's figure, his cheeks look even more caved-in, eyebrows furrowed. There's trees on their left and on the right a wall of a building with no windows in it, only missing person posters glued here and there for good measure. Taeyong can see it on Minhyung's face how he's thinking, changing his mind and then gradually getting more confident to speak until the exact moment it all gets spilled out.

"Listen," Taeyong's not sure he's going to, "let's just make it clear once and for all: my coming here has nothing to with you. I did not intend to meet you, neither last time nor tonight. That's all an accident." They're looking at one another and, as if completely ignoring the words being said, Taeyong catches himself reaching deep into the man's eyes. He's looking for the little something, a sparkle, that he's sure to find. "It's been over three years. We had a thing going on but when I asked you to leave with me, move out to a place where people you god damn love don't vanish into thin air without explanation one day you don't know when, you said no. You did. So now I'm just letting you know that I have a boyfriend--"

The provocative sparkle.

Barely does he finish the sentence, Taeyong surges forwards. He doesn't aim for a kiss, not at first, only getting hold of Minhyung's chin, making him stop talking and closing the distance between their bodies. It then turns into a fight, sloppy, or at least it's supposed to look like a fight, their steps synchronising, leading them out of the circle of light, Minhyung's body jerking away and his hands pressing against Taeyong's chest to push him away but with no real force to it. Like in a game of twister, with limbs constantly changing places and trying to fit between other limbs, Taeyong makes an attempt to grab at Minhyung's arms. Minhyung wrenches away, then slaps Taeyong's hands, Taeyong hisses, Minhyung produces what might be a giggle, they make two, three steps more and somehow it's Taeyong that ends up being pressed to the wall. With Minhyung pressed to him. And kissing him.

When they first kissed back in secondary school, it also started from a fight. As if they were just joking, ready to say that they didn't mean it.

"I've missed you," Taeyong confesses during one pause for breathing. "I've been thinking of you all this time," he adds at the next pause.

It would sound almost pathetic but he can't really hear himself over the blood chugging in his veins and Minhyung's breathes hitting his skin. Minhyung doesn't respond. He pushes his lips back after each confession Taeyong makes, time and again, stubbornly, feeling just like he used to and how Taeyong remembers it. Intense and full of anger towards the whole world, Taeyong included.

 

 

 

 

Minhyung overhears Jaehyun talk to his editor. Over the phone, he sounds excited, as he's stepping down the carpeted staircase into the hotel's dining room, dressed in his chequered bathrobe and a pair of slippers. It's been a week since they came to Minhyung's hometown, Jaehyun tells his editor, and he's already done with the first two chapters. He can send them any minute. There's a mystery and gore, he enumerates, his fingers running through his wet hair, a main character with personality issues and the violation of the boundary between reality and imagination.

Spotting Minhyung, he waves his hand and continues speaking as he walks forward. The biggest fear is that we go back down the evolutionary ladder, he says to the phone, because deep down our imagination has a primal character to it, no matter how advanced the technology gets. Just by the way he speaks, Minhyung knows how big a part of Jaehyun's mind is occupied, busy somewhere way far off from Minhyung.

He finishes the call, sits beside Minhyung and kisses him on the lips. Then they eat the breakfast together, the only guests in the hotel's dining room.

 

 

 

 

So when Jaehyun is writing the novel, Minhyung starts meeting Taeyong regularly.

They go for a beer and walk round the town, and the longer they are next to each other, exist in the same square meter, the more natural talking becomes. As they reminisce events from the past, pieces of a puzzle find their way and the image grows distinct.

They visit the forest, entering at the same place and following the same path that they used to in the past. Ashy vapors twirl inches above the ground, all around the town, and grow thicker wavering between the trees. Like it's the power plant that's always there in the background. It's ready to blow up any time soon. While pointing at specific details of the landscape, they tell each other how the trees used to be so small back in the day that kids could pretend they formed a base or a palace, you could walk underneath their roof, or how much more rubbish is now lying in the bushes. They say things like, "Remember that time when" or "Remember what happened the day when", and it's always followed by a round of chuckles.

They don't talk about the present nor about the future.

It feels like a perfect replica of one January evening where Minhyung should be going back home to his grandfather who's always crying and drinking, but Taeyong is pulling him by his arm, in the opposite direction, and they smoke another cigarette wading in the grass. Minhyung in his school uniform, the half-zipped rucksack nonchalantly thrown over his shoulder to make him look older than he is. Taeyong was always the better option, best out of the few Minhyung had. They smoke another cigarette, then a third one, and somehow, by the time the sun goes down, they're in Taeyong's flat, kissing, naked, kissing in his bed. Now as adults, their bodies move differently under the fingertips.

Minhyung feels like it could go on like this forever.

It's a weird crack in time where there's no present moment, but instead a weird overlap of here and somewhere far away, two pictures on top of each other. It's not a place where Minhyung belongs, that's for certain. He's a time traveler. Every time they have sex and Minhyung's lying in Taeyong's arms afterwards, sharply conscious of Taeyong's heart beating so close, it's a trip in time he's fallen into like Alice into a rabbit hole.

"Remember that time," Minhyung says, and this time he's lying with his chin propped against Taeyong's chest, running circles with his fingers on Taeyong's skin, "when you were stepping down the ladder from the the roof of the garage to sneak out at night, and your mother was doing the dishes downstairs." Taeyong's chest flutters with a chuckle. "She yelled, you fell flat on your arse, and then you run away two streets with a sprained ankle."

"What you mean to remind me of is that I've always been heroic, right?"

Minhyung makes a mocking face. "More like a total idiot."

"You got caught by my dad so technically it's you who got us into trouble." They stay silent for a while and Taeyong runs his fingers through Minhyung's dark hair, combing it back to normal. It's a caring, soft touch. "You know how stupid it was to have a crush on your friend's younger brother?"

Minhyung moves his head to one side to have a better look at Taeyong's face. "Must be the most uncool thing to do." And then, curiosity winning over, "When was that exactly?"

"Eighth grade. Your voice started changing." Taeyong reconsiders it. "I know it's weird because the same year your sister--"

"I know."

They drop the subject. All this time until now their conversations smoothly evaded the disappearances, just as they evaded Taeyong's job or Jaehyun existing at all, as if it was a parallel universe in which they stored the information.

Minhyung feels like it could go on forever, until the moment he's walking out of the bathroom, wearing his underwear and collecting his clothes from the floor, ready to go to the hotel and be back tomorrow, and Taeyong, still lying in bed goes, "Can we talk about what happened?"

Minhyung knows immediately. His hands get a bit limp as he's trying to button his shirt and fails.

"You mean by that?"

"Three years ago." Taeyong's voice stays firm and Minhyung guesses it's a speech he's already planned in his head, maybe for this particular evening to perform it. It's an interrogation, a trap. A good cop followed by a bad cop. "Without blaming anyone. Just be honest with me."

In the crack in time in which they've both nested, the atmosphere turns cold.

"You're saying that because you know it was all your fault." Taeyong attempts to jump in, but as it's usually the case, he's talked over by Minhyung. "I was always honest with you. I told you repeatedly that the day I get my diploma I'm out of here, and I was hundred percent serious about it. I told you you could go finish your police training somewhere else. But you chose to stay." He manages to get to the last button of his shirt. It feels like the words are rushing out of him on their own. "Don't think you can bullshit me about it now, like I don't remember it myself."

"You didn't leave your phone number," Taeyong snaps back at him, lifting his body from the pillows. The air gets thicker. "No number, no address. I had no idea where you were going so even if I had changed my mind, I couldn't have contacted you."

"I thought I was clear about it. All or nothing. Take it or leave it."

"You think you were so clear?" Taeyong sits on the edge of the bed and pushes his hair away from his forehead in one rushed gesture of his hand, the anger slowly showing in his movements. His tone turns accusatory. "Lee Minhyung, you've always been the least clear person ever. And you god damn enjoyed it."

Minhyung sniggers. Zipping his jeans, he turns with his back to Taeyong. "Are we now laying all cards on the table? You have a weird fixation with those disappearances. How is your police job working out for you?"

"Can you really blame me?"

"Everyone's tired of this. I'm tired of this. Remember how during secondary school media got interested in our town? Oh yeah, but there was no development so they just left after one documentary. This place sucks. It leads to nothing. That's what I've been telling you for ages."

"Listen--"

"I was always wondering if one day I come here with a visit and there will be nobody left. Because you all just disappear out of it."

Four quick steps, now Taeyong's standing next to him, forcing the two of them to be looking at each other's faces, his silhouette throwing a shade over Minhyung. "That's all because of your family, right?"

"Forget about it." Minhyung waves his hand like the disappearance of his family seven years ago is just a fly to be discouraged from sitting on his shoulder. "I've wasted enough years thinking about them. Years when I was wondering if maybe they didn't disappear like the rest did. Maybe they actually left me alone pretending to disappear."

Taeyong's expression is different than the past couple days. His eyebrows furrowed and lips pressed into a thin line, he looks indeed like a cop trying to scare the suspect into being good. He has his eyes obstinately locked onto Minhyung to the point it's becoming uncomfortable.

"I did everything for you those years. You were the most annoying little brat and I've done everything."

"Your parents can disappear. Your friends. Teachers. The shop assistant from your local grocery. The postman who's been bringing you your mail ever since you remember, who took your Santa Claus letters. This is sick. What do you get out of it?" When Taeyong attempts to grip on Minhyung's wrist, Minhyung takes two steps back and dodges it. "Don't even try."

"You're saying it's me who's fixated."

"You think you're going to become some great saviour everyone will remember? It's a mystery nobody gives a fuck about."

The second attempt, Taeyong locks his fingers around Minhyung's wrist. It's a way to prevent the younger man from evacuating the moment the conversation takes a turn he doesn't like. Minhyung jerks back, unsuccessfully.

"Somebody god damn has to."

"But you don't and I didn't want you to." This time, when Taeyong pushes a kiss onto Minhyung lips, it ends up abruptly broken. Minhyung doesn't let it last longer than for their tongues to touch. "You were the only damn person I had and then it felt like you disappeared as well. Because of this crazy town."

While snapping the responses, back and forth, they both take slow steps, making almost a full circle around the bedroom, Minhyung walking away from Taeyong and Taeyong following his every move. Minhyung's heartbeats are palpable just where Taeyong's holding him.

"You grew up with everyone treating you like you were made out of paper. Whenever you did shit to people everyone excused you because of your damn missing parents."

"And you loved it." Minhyung jerks his arm again but that only brings Taeyong closer. Their noses can almost touch. "You thought you could be my new dad and tell me what to do. Have me suck your cock after classes."

"What are you talking about?"

The hand Taeyong isn't holding, Minhyung runs it over his face, his eyes shutting and regret washing over his face. Their steps come to a halt. "I don't know. Forget it. I really don't know."

In the awkward silence that follows, Taeyong takes his hands away and scratches his neck, his eyes finally dropping to come back up after a while and look at Minhyung differently.

"I haven't seen anyone else since you left."

And damn, for Minhyung, it feels awful to hear. They stopped by the door to Taeyong's bedroom and Minhyung leans against the wall like he's about to faint. Even from here, when he glances at the window, he can see the power plant and the smoke whirling out of it, and the wind rushing through the trees. It's like a mirage. Whichever window you look out of, wherever you go, there's always the power plant in your peripheral vision.

"Maybe that's where our problem is lying," Minhyung blurts out at last, in a smaller voice. His heart is pumping the blood and his ears feel hot, he's just realised it now. He's in the scene out of Jaehyun's novel where the characters experience the epiphany. We're all going to die. The steps in the snow led into the house but not out of it. Whoever or whatever came in, it's still among us. It's inside. He says, "One of us moved on. I mean, I think I did. I've been trying to move on ever since it happened and you can't now take it away from me. I'm fucking trying, okay?" His voice cracks and he takes a deep breath before continuing, "Some things just go. You don't see them again."

Flashbulb memory. Minhyung asked Jaehyun on one occasion, how do you know you've reached the end of the story. That this is where the things should stop. That you've exhausted it all. Jaehyun shrugged his shoulders. He had his hair wet after the shower, the fringe hanging over his forehead, over his eyes, in a way that always made him look softer, more boyish, half-obscuring his vision. Shrugging his shoulders, he went, "You never really know it. You just have to cut it at some point, edge it. If you go on forever, the more you say, the worst taste it has."

Minhyung came up to the sofa on which Jaehyun was seated. Leaning against it, he snuggled his chin into the crook of Jaehyun's shoulder, looking at the screen of Jaehyun's notebook but without really seeing the words being written. "Everyone's dead?" he asked, joking.

Jaehyun chuckled in response, as predicted. Jaehyun always seemed to be amused by Minhyung's jokes. Another murder hotel or a haunted bridge. A place where someone's been assassinated or where the biggest mansion has been burned down to ashes, they follow the path from one to the other, always running away to somewhere else on the map.

 

 

 

 

When he gets back to the hotel, Jaehyun has a serious face. He's asking about the last night. He asks where Minhyung went at four am because he certainly wasn't in bed.

"I had to smoke," Minhyung lies. Somehow, with time, lying gets much easier, like coming up with a story to write in a novel. Looking at Jaehyun's face, he frowns and crinkles his nose, a child caught red-handed by a parent, only the parents are absent so they can't catch you. "What? Was I supposed to wake you up to tell you I'm going for a cigarette?"

Jaehyun stands up from before the table and his notebook and approaches Minhyung. "Remember how we met in the haunted hotel?"

"Of course I do."

Jaehyun nods his head. There's a smile that flashes through his pink lips, momentarily, like it does every time Minhyung says he remembers. I remember how we met, how we first kissed, had sex, how you wrote your second novel and we moved in together paying with the royalties.

"Okay. So remember that night when we run down the corridors both pretending to be ghosts to freak the guests out?"

Minhyung doesn't necessarily know where this is going. He's still frowning. "Yeah, I remember."

"So last night, when I woke up at four and you weren't in bed with me, you weren't breathing behind my neck, I had this unstoppable feeling like I slipped through the crack in time and I was back in this exact moment, in the haunted hotel, all by myself and you were about to knock on the door to ask me to do something stupid with you." Jaehyun's words switch into a stream of consciousness, the way it always happens when he's feeling things, Minhyung knows that because he knows Jaehyun. "I thought to myself that I would have to figure a way back in time, like a time traveler. Back to you right here and right now."

When Jaehyun smiles, Minhyung's lips mirror the expression automatically. "You know we're not in one of your novels?"

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> it is inconclusive indeed. part of the reason is that i intended for it to be open-ended. the other reason is i just simply didn't know what else to add, and if i started working it into a longer story, sure thing i would never manage and would never decide to publish it.


End file.
